That Would Be Alright, Wouldn't It?
by shinealightonme
Summary: Oneshot, set in Infinity. Sakura has something on her mind but learns that you can't get an answer to a question that you don't ask.


AN: The title comes from Casablanca, the scene where the Bulgarian girl comes to Rick for advice ("If someone loved you very much, so that your happiness was the only thing she wanted in the world, and she did a bad thing to make certain of it, could you forgive her?...And he never knew, and the girl kept this bad thing locked in her heart, that would be alright, wouldn't it?"). I love that movie. I _really_ suggest you watch it if you never have.

I'm having some writer's block for a different story, and I thought I'd try writing something else just so I would at least be doing something. So there I was, thinking about Tsubasa and watching Casablanca for about the fortieth time and, well, this story is the result. Sakura was rather troublesome to write here. In Infinity, she's very distant from the others – except Fai – and she's definitely not herself. I tried to capture that without making her completely OOC. Please let me know how you think it turned out!

Disclaimer: I do not own Tsubasa or Casablanca

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It was that awkward time when late night becomes early morning, and the room was dim. It should have been pitch black, since the lamps inside were off inside, but the lights outside – neon signs and streetlights, mostly – illuminated the room where Kurogane sat, making it bright enough for him to read a book, if he wanted to do so.

He didn't. All he really wanted to do was drink. No, that wasn't quite it – the things he wanted to do weren't options, and all that was left for him to do was drink. So he did, every night, in steadily increasing amounts, because the alcohol was never enough to stop his thoughts or his emotions.

He was really starting to hate this place.

Earlier in the night, the street had been as noisy as it had been bright, but even in this horrible world people went to sleep eventually. It was fairly quiet now, and the outside noises were muffled enough for Kurogane to hear the sound of a door creaking open.

He looked up slowly. If it had been the front door, he would already be on his feet with Souhi in his hands, ready to challenge whatever intruder was stupid enough to break in. Since it was one of the interior doors, though, it made him curious rather than defensive.

The hall got a little brighter as light from someone's bedroom spilled into it. Everything stayed that way for a moment, and Kurogane wondered who was standing in their doorway at three in the morning. The wizard, probably, considering his new _nocturnal_ nature. Or Mokona, who had passed out hours ago but might have awoken wanting more to drink (that little manjuu was quite the alcoholic and drank a good deal more than the ninja, if one adjusted the figures to account for the difference in sizes).

He was wrong, though. After several minutes of stillness, he heard light footsteps coming down the hall, and then Sakura appeared in the doorway. In her black, elaborate clothing she looked like a fairy queen from one of the crueler fairytales, the kind of being that casts harsh enchantments over unlucky mortals. The vacant and distant look in her eyes – as though the room she was seeing was very different from the room she was looking at – only added to this effect.

"Princess?" Kurogane asked. He kept his voice quiet and calm to avoid startling her, since she had clearly not seen him yet. "Is something wrong?"

"Oh! Kurogane-san. Why are you still awake?" She didn't seem very startled. She didn't seem much of anything. It was that damn distancing technique she had picked up from the wizard. She addressed him in the polite, mild way one uses with strangers one doesn't want to upset and it bugged the hell out of him.

He didn't want to discuss that now, so he simply turned his gaze to the glass in his hand and muttered, "Not tired."

"You really should try to get some sleep, though. It isn't good for you to stay up so late."

He looked back at her, this somber apparition that haunted him with memories over a happier past. In those days, the words she had just spoken would have been infused with a genuine concern for his wellbeing. Now she said it in an impersonal, clinical way, as though she were sharing something not particularly interesting that she had heard the other day.

Distance or not, he wasn't going to let her hypocrisy go by unacknowledged. "What about you, then? Why are you awake?"

She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled, but it was a reflex and lacked any real emotion. "I had a bad dream."

The vague answers, the fake smile, the moody disposition – just when had she become the damn mage? She had never been like this before Tokyo. Even in Tokyo, after going through hell, she had been herself – determined, honest, naïve, optimistic. She had begun to emulate the wizard so suddenly that Kurogane had not seen the change.

It was, perhaps, a coping mechanism, but he thought it was a very poor one. It didn't work for Fai and it wouldn't work for Sakura and, sooner or later, they were both going to fall apart.

She shifted her weight and he wondered if she knew what he was thinking. If she did, it didn't bother her as much as it bothered him, and she sat on a chair facing him across the small table.

For a minute or two there was silence while she made some decision. Kurogane could see that she was thinking but had no idea what about. It came as a bit of a surprise to him when she nodded slightly and asked him, "May I have a drink with you, Kurogane-san?"

He shrugged "Sure," and stood to fetch a second glass. That was apparently unnecessary, because Sakura grabbed the bottle and drank straight from it. As she placed it back on the table a look of despair flashed across her face. It was there and gone so quickly that Kurogane wouldn't have caught it if he hadn't been watching her closely.

The silence between them became more awkward the longer it stretched on. Kurogane waited for Sakura to say something – _she _had asked to drink with _him_, not the other way around. She, however, had something on her mind. Was she making another decision, he wondered, or second-guessing her earlier one? Was she about to stand and leave with a restrained "good night?"

He hoped not. He wanted her to stay, to say whatever she had come to say. If she would talk to him, she would be more like herself and less like Fai. Kurogane couldn't help Fai, and he couldn't help Sakura if she continued to act like Fai, but he might be able to help the real her.

Slowly, looking only at her clasped hands, she asked him "Kurogane-san...is it wrong...to tell a lie?"

It was not the sort of question he'd been expecting, but it was something. He thought for a minute about the question itself and her possible motives for asking it before he grunted. "Depends. Why?"

Her eyes remained low. Maybe she could only say this if she pretended she was talking to her hands. "I remember...Nii-sama told me once that lying is very bad. That you shouldn't tell lies...especially not to people you love, because it hurts them."

There was a long pause. Was Kurogane supposed to answer? He didn't know what to say and he was afraid that if he spoke, he would break the spell. After several moments the girl continued.

"But what if...what if you love someone so much that you have to lie to them? What if you want to help someone you love, and the only way to do that is to lie to them? If you did that..." She finally looked up at him, and it was as though she were really seeing him for the first time since they had come to this damn place. "That would be alright, wouldn't it?"

This time she was expecting an answer, but Kurogane didn't know what to say. Partly he was thrown off by her sudden openness, and partly he was worried about her reaction. Under other circumstances the ninja would have answered "yes" without hesitation. He had no qualms with doing bad things to achieve his goals. He would have lied to Tomoyo if he had to in order to protect her. But this princess was already so distance, hiding her emotions and thoughts and lying by omission, and he didn't want to encourage this behavior. He wanted her to be the happy, positive girl she had once been, not the dark, dishonest girl she was now.

He had to say something – but what? He knew that this was not her real question, and he wanted her to ask that question, the one that was on her mind and kept her up at night and made her treat friends like strangers. But she hadn't asked it, and he didn't know the right response to the question she had asked.

They sat there, each trying to make the other reveal something they were hiding, until Sakura stood. Her mask and its beautifully painted smile were firmly back in place. "It is so late; I think I shall go to bed now. Do forgive me for my intrusion." She turned around and left.

There was that carefully impersonal voice again. He had heard her real voice for just a moment, and it had been an opportunity to restore her, but he hadn't known how. He had hesitated and now the chance was lost, and maybe Sakura was too.

Kurogane sat in the dark for a long time, wondering if things would ever be alright again.


End file.
